


Gemini

by MapleMooseMuffin



Series: Sheith Month 2017 [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: A bunch of random stars are mentioned because I'm lame and Shiro is poeticish, Crushes, Day 4: Freedom, Day 6: Haircut, Fluff, M/M, One story but both themes fit in, Pre-Kerberos Mission, Sheith Month, SheithMonth2k17, Stargazing, assumes VLD takes place in the near(ish) future, it's a combo piece
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 08:28:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11733357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MapleMooseMuffin/pseuds/MapleMooseMuffin
Summary: Spread out in a private corner of the Garrison campus, Shiro and Keith share small kernels of themselves beneath a welcoming blanket of stars.





	Gemini

**Author's Note:**

> I fell behind on Sheith Month and decided to start with the current day and work my way back, but then this ended up having aspects of day 4's theme Freedom in it as well as day 6's Haircut, and I went with it.
> 
> [@Keith-and-Shiro-were-dating](https://keith-and-shiro-were-dating.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr [suggested a fic inspired by season 3](https://sheithficideas.tumblr.com/post/163795746590/keith-likes-the-samurai), which in turn inspired me to make this, which is 90% unrelated and contains no spoilers for s3, but whatever lol. Still figured I'd give credit where credit is due.  
> This fic works with the headcanon that V:LD takes place like, 100ish years from now, so there's a brief reference to 'outdated' tech.  
> I talk about/name stars a fair bit here, but don't be fooled, despite the single Astronomy course I took two years ago, I don't know what I'm talking about. Feel free to correct me.  
> Title is a working title until I get something better.  
> Shiro verges on poetic in this but oh well.  
> Enjoy.

            The desert night is familiar to all cadets at the Galaxy Garrison, but especially so to Keith and Shiro. They spend as many hours a week stargazing as they do working on homework, and for Shiro, spreading out on a throw blanket in the crisp air which seeps through their thermal shirts, and breathing in the cold dry smell of the grainy sands less than a mile away, leaves him feeling light and free. Without the burdens of strict military rules, upperclassman duties and responsibilities, and constant eyes fixed on him and his reputation, Shiro is free to simply feel like a teenager for once. Alive and young and occupying a miniscule, inconsequential amount of space in the midst of a vast universe. Other people find the expanse of space intimidating or disheartening, but for Shiro, whose every action matters greatly to the officers reviewing his mission applications and the cadets aiming to beat his sim scores, the sentiment that what he does won’t affect the vast majority of existence is a relief.

            Better, though, in some paradoxical way, is his ability to share this private sensation with someone who will understand. To his right, stretched out on his back with hands clasped together on his stomach, Keith stares up at the night sky and the distant stars. Shiro stretches his arm up and under his head, resting it in the palm of his gloved hand and feeling the soft short hairs of his undercut. It’s getting longer, he notices, no longer having the freshly buzzed feeling, but instead the silky smoothness of close-cropped hair. He ought to trim it again, before the undercut turns into an awful layered mess.

            As his mind drifts through the trivial subject, Keith breaks the silence, face still turned up to the stars as he asks, “Ever think of growing your hair out?”

            Shiro’s eyes drift to the side to look at Keith. He seems comfortable, free now from the confines of the high collared orange uniform. It was a fight to even convince him to wear the tight thermal shirt he has on, Keith insisting that he didn’t need the warmth and Shiro reminding him that the desert autumn was as merciless at night as it was during the day. If it were up to Keith, he’d run around in the same plain black t-shirt day and night until it wore through. The thought makes Shiro smile as he turns his eyes back up to the expansive sky.

            “What, like Matt’s?”

            He thinks he hears Keith shrug while he scans the sky for Orion’s belt. The first constellation he ever learned by heart, Shiro always starts with the hunter and his stars. Alnilam, Alnitak, Mintaka. Strange names he spent hours memorizing as a child. The belt was always the hardest to remember, and easiest to find.

            “I guess. Not really what I meant.”

            Saiph is the next hardest, and then Meissa. After that it’s easy; Rigel almost sounds like a name, and Bellatrix and Betelgeuse come from movies his great-grandmother had in her home. It amazed Shiro, thinking back, that she even _had_ a DVD player, let alone that it worked. She said she grew up with them, and with even more obsolete tech, said she remembered a time before even plasma TVs. It was crazy to imagine, especially when he was laid out under the same exact constellations _she’d_ learned about in school. So much had changed, but so much more _hadn’t_.

            “Were you thinking long hair?”

            He turns his head, just enough to get a good look at Keith. The starlight is reflected in his stormy blue eyes, and it’s a detail that captures both Shiro’s attention and his breath, because it’s so painfully cliché, to be laying out here, with his best friend slash secret crush, stargazing and seeing literal stars in his eyes, but here they are. Smack dab in the middle of a scene from every romance novel ever written. If this were a movie, they’d be close to the inevitable climax.

            “Yeah,” Keith says, eyes gliding to the side so he can look at Shiro. A quiet moment passes as Shiro watches the other thinking, or perhaps just examining his face. Shiro manages not to blush at the blatant, open look in Keith’s eyes. His stare always bores into its target, unintentionally burning. “You’d look good with it.”

            Shiro swallows and turns to face the stars again, feeling heat prickle up the back of his neck and into the edges of his ears. He hopes Keith doesn’t notice, hopes he turns back to the stars, or at the very least assumes it’s just the cold as Shiro chuckles awkwardly.

            “I don’t know about that,” he says. Keith doesn’t say anything. Shiro tries to fill the silence. “I mean, it’s not really my style. I’d probably look like a… a castaway or a homeless person.” He laughs again, and he can _hear_ the awkwardness in it, the self-depreciation that always crops up when he’s the slightest bit flustered. _Humble_ , they call him. Shiro doesn’t think it’s an apt description.

            “A samurai,” Keith says, passively, like it’s an afterthought. A cautious glance to the side confirms that he’s turned back to the stars. Shiro wonders if he’s made up a new constellation, and searches the sky for it. He thinks he maybe sees it near Pollux, but it’s hard to tell.

            “Where?”

            “Huh?”

            Shiro raises his free hand to gesture above them. “Where’s the samurai?”

            He hears Keith shift and turns his head again to see the younger raise up on an elbow. His bangs have already started growing out, stretching down into his eyes. He shakes them aside with a small practiced flick of his head.

            “No, I meant you.”

            Shiro lowers his arm and raises an eyebrow. “I’m a samurai?”

            “Well, no,” Keith says, and looks to the edge of the blanket for half a beat before returning his gaze. “I meant, with long hair, you would look it.”

            Oh. The image of noble, rugged warriors with elegant faces and passionate loyalty is drawn up in his mind, admirable but far more impressive than anything Shiro feels he can be fairly compared to.

            He can’t find a joke to make to cover the way his stomach flips at the look in Keith’s eyes. Strong and penetrating as always, but so stubbornly assured and insistent, leaving no room for argument. How anything so steely blue as Keith’s sharp gaze can hold that much warmth has always been a disarming mystery to Shiro, and the intensity keeps him rooted to the spot, staring back into the eyes whose gaze he imagines is sinking through him and turning over all the contents of his mind. It is an amazingly vulnerable feeling, meeting Keith’s gaze.

            In the back of his mind, Shiro remembers Matt saying once that a meeting of the eyes which lasts longer than ten seconds signals either the desire to kill or mate with the other person. How long has it been, then? Not that it would prove anything. Keith has always been an unabashed stare-er.

            “You think so?” Shiro manages to ease out of his dry mouth. Keith blinks once and gives a small nod.

            “You have a… a sharp jaw, and this sort of, defined face.” Shiro can’t avoid the blush crawling up across his face at that, because Keith’s comments mean Keith has noticed his face, has focused on the details of it. It’s flattering and nerve wracking at the same time. “It’s handsome.”

            Shiro _burns_. He laughs and turns back to the stars, unable to look at Keith anymore, lest he explode here and now, with his heart vibrating in his chest. Keith is by no means the first to call him handsome. His family, of course, has gushed about “their handsome boy” and then “young man” since essentially his birth. At every school he’s gone to there have been admirers, people drawn to the way he carries himself, or his kindness, or his academic or physical ability. He’s been popular for most of his life, and he isn’t naïve enough to miss that. But rarely has he been called handsome by someone he’s felt attracted to. And he _is_ attracted to Keith, so very much so.

            He knows enough to know it doesn’t have to mean anything. That it probably _doesn’t_ mean anything. Keith is known for saying whatever is on his mind, regardless of what others might think, and Shiro is admired enough to be used to platonic compliments. Yet there’s still a part of him that lights up with untamed hope that maybe this is the first sign, first step, beginning of _something_. It’s that hope that drives Shiro to say something back, to reciprocate somehow and give Keith more than that awkward laugh and stretching silence.

            Heart hammering, Shiro manages to keep a light and natural tone as he says, “I think it’d look nicer on you.” It’s not exactly what he thought he’d say, though it isn’t false. Keith is, to be frank, rather pretty, with his bright eyes and soft skin. Not that Shiro would say _that_ ; he’s witnessed firsthand what happens when someone calls Keith ‘Pretty Boy’, has physically held Keith back from going through with the threats that name triggers. But with his sleek jaw line and long eyelashes, Shiro’s willing to bet that a longer haircut would fall elegantly around his face. The dark strands would give a striking contrast to Keith’s pale skin.

            Shiro hears Keith shift back down, the younger’s arm brushing against Shiro’s as he raises his hand to toy with a sleek lock of his own. Shiro glances sideways, unable to keep his eyes off of Keith for very long even here, under the stars. Keith is staring up, Sirius reflected in his eyes as a tiny smile eases over his lips. It isn’t hard for Shiro to guess why.

            “Maybe,” Keith says.

            “You seem like you’ve been growing it out, anyway, since the Garrison decided to drop the hair length restriction from the dress code.” Shiro watches Keith try to swallow back the smile, watches it stick all the same, just as stubborn as the rest of Keith. Keith twirls a choppy strand around his index finger and gives a tiny chuckle, nodding just a bit.

            “Maybe,” he says again. It means yes, means he’s been toying with the idea for a while, and is pleased Shiro agrees with him.

            Shiro smiles, and finds himself infinitely thankful for that little freedom of expression in their regulated lives.

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me about season 3, Shiro, Keith, or Sheith on my Tumblr, [@maple-moose-muffin](http://maple-moose-muffin.tumblr.com/) .


End file.
